So you may or may not have seen Dan Wells’ lecture on Seven-Point Story Structure. (I mentioned a blog or two ago that I wanted to talk about it. This is the one you’ve all been waiting for.)

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it breaks down your basic narrative structure into the following seven points:

Hook

Plot Turn 1

Pinch 1

Midpoint

Pinch 2

Plot Turn 2

Resolution

Some of these terms may be a little unfamiliar to you, so I will expound on them briefly.

Hook- this is the opposite state to your Resolution. If your protagonist ends the story a hero or in love or dead, they need to start the story in a state where they are not those things. Their lack thereof, for whatever reason, ought to be compelling enough that, right from the get-go, we would like to see them in this…

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A couple weeks ago I had the great pleasure of seeing an old favorite from the 1980s: Silverado. In its time, it was not a blockbuster. Nor did it achieve the iconic silver-screen cultural footprint of other contemporary Western productions like Young Guns or Unforgiven. But it did have a long life on the cable movie networks, gaining a substantial amount of audience traction among those who appreciate a good old-fashioned Western feel-good drama. Silverado has an excellent ensemble cast, with numerous faces familiar to anyone who knows the eighties. But more than that, it has great story elements which are instructive for anyone considering how to properly plot and pace their writing.

HOOK BEGINNING. Everyone talks about how the opening of Star Wars hit them. With the Imperial cruiser roaring over the top of the audience, blasting away at the Rebel blockade runner. I think Silverado does a very…

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As you guys know I’ve been reading about von Braun. Mostly I’ve been reading about Von Braun because I visited Huntsville for TVIW and got curious. Before that all I’d heard bout him, as a person, was, dropped in a conversation “I figure he was a true psychopath who didn’t care, so long as he got to space.”

After reading four biographies (two for, two against) I regret to tell you that I’m not sure that was true.

I come neither to bury Von Braun not to praise him. I doubt if he knew, in himself, if he was a villain or a hero. And I doubt he was a psychopath. The reason I doubt he was the later is that he didn’t take to a totalitarian regime like a duck to water. Instead he tried to compromise his soul a little at a time, a vestige of humanity and…

At approximately 5:10 p.m. on September 7, 2016, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (NP) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, heard screaming from an office adjacent to hers at Munson Army Health Center. The civilian NP ran into the hallway and found 26-year-old 1LT Katie Ann Blanchard, an active duty Registered Nurse (RN) and mother of three, on fire from the waist up. (Details of the attack from the FBI Criminal Complaint, dated 8SEP16 can be found here.)

The smell of gasoline filled the hallway. The NP could see another coworker, 54-year-old Clifford Currie, in the office with Katie. He was clutching a straight-edged razor in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. Currie, a short, rotund man weighing well over 200 pounds, was screaming at Katie and stabbing at her face even as she was engulfed in flames.

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It’s very hard to write violence, for the same reason it’s very hard to write sex. No, wait, there is one difference, most people have experienced sex, but most people have never been in a knife or fist fight.

Even those of us who’ve been in fights have a tendency to blur them in our minds. In my case perhaps more so, as I think I’m a berserker, because one minute I get the cold realization I’m going to fight, the next second — seems like — I’m trying to squish someone with a heavy oak desk, and five of my classmates are holding me back. Considering at the time that desk probably massed half of my body weight, I’d say there was altered consciousness there.

Be that as it may, even if you’re fully conscious through a fight, it’s hard to remember it. The thing is that everything happens…

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During Mary Buckham’s recent online Pacing class, she suggested we improve our scene pacing by following a model found in Chapter 4 of Dwight V. Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. That model involves breaking scenes into goal/conflict/disaster, followed by the point-of-view (POV) character’s reaction/dilemma/decision in reaction to the disaster. This model resonated with me.

So recently, when I was considering how to sharpen my paragraphs, I pulled out my trusty copy of Swain’s book and reread Chapter 3, “Plain Facts About Feelings.” In it, Swain suggests that the key to writing better paragraphs is to break moment-by-moment action into motivation/reaction units (MRUs).

I’m sure many of you have mastered writing MRUs, but today I thought I’d review Swain’s advice for those of you who, like me, still sometimes struggle.

According to Swain, the first step is to understand that, like scenes, MRUs must be written from the…